across the sky, a dim, pallid glow, which would filter down through the
snow and allow the cub's eyes (if they happened to be open at the time)
to make out something of his mother's gigantic white form.

"For the youngster of so huge a mother, the snowhouse baby was quite
absurdly small. But this defect, by sticking closely to his business, he
remedied with amazing rapidity. In fact, if his mother had cared to stay
awake long enough to watch, she could fairly have seen him grow. But, of
course, this growth was all at his mother's expense, seeing that he had
no food except her milk. So as he grew bigger and fatter, she grew
thinner and lanker, till you would hardly have recognized this long,
gaunt, white fur bag of bones for the plump beast of the previous autumn.

"But all passes--even an Arctic winter. The sun began to make short
daily trips across the horizon. It got higher and higher, and hotter and
hotter. The snow began to melt, crumble, shrink upon itself. Up to
within a couple of hundred yards of the hidden snowhouse, what had seemed
to be solid land broke up and revealed itself as open sea, crowded with
huge ice cakes, and walrus, and seals. Sea birds came splashing and
screaming. And a wonderful thrill awoke in the air.

"That thrill got down into the snowhouse--the roof of which was by this
time getting much thinner. The cub found himself much less sleepy. He
grew restless. He wanted to stretch his sturdy little legs to find out
what they were good for. His mother, too, woke up. She found herself so
hungry that there was no temptation to go to sleep again. Moreover, it
was beginning to feel too warm for comfort--that is, for a polar bear's
comfort, not for yours or mine--in the snowhouse. She got up and shook
herself. One wall of the snowhouse very civilly gave way a bit, allowing
her more room. But the roof, well supported by the rock, still held.